Henry Vines, a farmer from the unincorporated community of Snow Camp, is planning to seek the Republican Party’s nod for one of the two seats that will be available on Alamance County’s board of commissioners in 2026.
A 72-year-old native of Alamance County, Vines has made several previous bids for the county’s governing board as a member of the Democratic Party – most recently in 2020. A particularly poor showing in that year’s Democratic primary convinced Vines to shift his allegiance to the GOP.
“One of the reasons I didn’t get elected as a Democrat was because of my conservative views,” Vines recalled in an interview earlier this week. “I’m a businessman here in this county, and every year, I have to make a budget and stay on it. That’s what I want to bring to the county.”
“These property taxes keep going up every year and when you look at it there’s no reason why they should be. We’re constantly spending money on anything and everything. . . The taxpayers in this county shouldn’t be taking up the state and federal government’s responsibilities, like we have with these teacher supplements. . . We’re going to have to get back to what’s needed to run and operate this county for the benefit of the citizens.”
– Henry Vines, Republican candidate for county commissioner in 2026
Since his change in affiliation, Vines has made a pitch to the local GOP’s leadership to be appointed to a vacancy that emerged on the board of commissioners in the fall of 2024. The party’s top brass ultimately passed over Vines without a vote or even a nomination and, instead, awarded the opening to Kelly Allen, who was at the time serving as the mayor of Haw River.
Vines is nevertheless confident that that his back-to-basics philosophy will get more traction with the Republican rank-and-file during the primary election in March. In the meantime, he suspects that members of both political parties are fed up with the county’s elected leadership due to a series of property tax hikes that he feels have been particularly hard on the county’s rural residents.
“I think we need some representation on that board from the country folks. Everybody who’s on that board now is from inside the city limits, and I don’t think they understand how the country folks feel.”
– Henry Vines, who plans to be a GOP candidate for county commissioner in 2026
Vines notes that, in his own pocket of southern Alamance County, property owners have been forced to shoulder a 3-cent hike to support their rural fire department in addition to a 2.5-cent increase that the board of commissioners imposed on all of the county’s residents when they adopted a new budget this spring. Vines contends that the board of commissioners may be more mindful of the pinch their decisions have had on rural residents if even one of its members resided outside the corporate limits of the county’s cities and towns.
“To raise the property tax five and a half cents in one year is a problem,” the Snow Camp resident insists. “I think we need some representation on that board from the country folks. Everybody who’s on that board now is from inside the city limits, and I don’t think they understand how the country folks feel.”
Although born and raised within the city of Burlington, Vines asserts that his own frame of reference has been that of the countryside ever since he and his wife moved to their home on Euliss Road in 1977. A year later, the aspiring county commissioner began growing fruits and vegetables to sell out the back of his truck. A few years later, he bought some land to raise tobacco and grain as a sideline to his primary job with the logistics division at Burlington Industries.
When Burlington Industries went into terminal decline in the early ‘90s, Vines began to tend chickens to supplement his income. The aspiring county commissioner has remained in the poultry business ever since he built his first chicken houses. In the meantime, he has grown increasingly troubled by what he has seen county officials getting up to from his figurative perch in Snow Camp.
First and foremost among Vines’ concerns is the county’s ever-escalating property tax rate, which he believes has become disentangled from the county’s actual needs.
“These property taxes keep going up every year and when you look at it there’s no reason why they should be,” he said. “We’re constantly spending money on anything and everything…The taxpayers in this county shouldn’t be taking up the state and federal government’s responsibilities, like we have with these teacher supplements…We’re going to have to get back to what’s needed to run and operate this county for the benefit of the citizens.”
Vines takes particular umbrage with the staff-level pay raises that the county’s leaders have approved since they commissioned a salary study that found the county’s wages to be more or less on par with competing jurisdictions. He also faults the board of commissioners for its mid-year appropriations on things like signing bonuses at the local sheriff’s office.
Vines acknowledges that his misgivings about county government have been shaped by more than just his rural sensibilities. In the case of views on property taxes, he’s also been able to apply his experience as a member of county’s board of equalization and review. The primary role of this appointed body is to hear appeals from property owners who dispute the county’s assessed property values. Vines notes that, after hearing an untold number of these appeals, he has come to realize that the real estate prices have gone up far more for homeowners than the proprietors of businesses. He insists that the resulting increase in residential tax values was exacerbated when the board of commissioners set a new tax rate after the last countywide revaluation that exceeded the “revenue neutral” levy needed for the county to break even.
In addition to serving on the board of equalization and review, Vines is also a current member of the county’s planning board. The would-be county commissioner contends that his time on this board has reinforced his belief that the county needs some form of zoning outside its cities and towns.
“I still believe that this county needs some kind of land planning out in the country,” he concedes. “With all the growth that is being proposed we are going to create a lot for a lot of people if we don’t do something.”
Despite the time and effort that Vines has spent poring over the county’s affairs, he has no shortage of interests outside of the county’s headquarters in Graham.
Much of his personal time is allotted to his wife Donna, his two adult daughters, and the couple’s six grandchildren. Vines has also devoted 35 years to the local farm bureau – as well as 22 years to its state-level equivalent – and he currently serves on the board of directors for the Alamance Region Antique Auto Club. He and his wife are, moreover, regular parishioners at Mount Zion Baptist Church on Greensboro-Chapel Hill Road, where Vines presently chairs the church’s cemetery committee.
Yet, even with all this going on, Vines is determined to hit the campaign trail next year in order to bring his rural outlook to the county’s board of commissioners.
“I’m tired of folks saying they’re going to do one thing and turning around and doing another,” he says of the board’s current members. “You need to mean what you say and say what you mean.”
